


Tech Emotional Support

by Quantum_Tarantino



Category: RWBY
Genre: Code Monkey Awareness, F/F, Fluff and Smut, Holodecks/Holosuites, Married Couple, Masturbation, Sex Tapes, Shibari
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:02:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22077409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quantum_Tarantino/pseuds/Quantum_Tarantino
Summary: In the wake of the infrastructural apocalypse that is the CCT network going down, everyone is affected. Not just the masterminds behind it or the spunky groups of ragtag teenagers, but even the humble code monkeys eking out a living on the other side of the continent.Terra is running on fumes to keep things under control when the communications backbone is gone, and in the small hours of the night, she decides she deserves a break.
Relationships: Saphron Cotta-Arc/Terra Cotta-Arc
Comments: 4
Kudos: 47





	Tech Emotional Support

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a chapter on my Kinktober 2019 series. This particular chapter was a personal favorite of mine from the set, so I felt like polishing it off into a proper one-shot.

Terra frowned and tapped at her keyboard, browsing through a set of rope patterns. Her office was stiflingly warm, courtesy of the numerous computers and ad-hoc server racks whirring away in the small hours of the night while the pale glow of the screens kept the room illuminated before dawn. She moved a few pages forward and then flipped back, comparing two different designs. There was a sweet spot of aesthetics and effort that had to be hit when it came to shibari which was surprisingly difficult to hit. While ebi ties did look lovely, they absolutely needed a second person to finish which would ruin the surprise.

"Hmm," she absent-mindedly said into her microphone, tearing her eyes from the designs to glance at the screen to her right. "You just have to route it through M-net. Not much else you can do." On the other screen, a tired colleague of hers was trying to drown his problems in caffeine. Usually the calls were made with some semblance of professionalism, but given how everything had been on fire for the past five days, the usual dress code of "business casual" had given way to "nobody cares" as the night shifts racked up. He was in a wonderful, worn-out manatee-themed T-shirt with the words "Hot Sh*t" emblazoned on the front, and she was in shorts and an equally scuffed tank top from her college days, both outfits being the closest things to comfortable they could get in the current situation.

She frowned, shifting her attention back to the designs and picturing the possibilities. A criss-cross harness would look great... and it was easy enough to hide too.

 _"Terra, you can't be serious,"_ he said from the other screen. _"The bandwith is so strangled that we'd be pooling data faster than it goes through!"_

Maybe something new entirely. She could see a double-coin knot in the front to draw the eye. "Welcome to the pre-CCT world, Berner. I've had to cut so much telemetry from here that I swear I saw one of the stats guys cry." Yeah, she had done an ebi tie just last week too, so something different was in order. She flicked her eyes to the side screen in an anxious reflex as practiced as blinking, checking up on the uptime histogram. Red, red, bloody red, but not more so than yesterday.

 _"This is absolutely crucial. I was told to get it done, and I quote, 'even if you have to pull a fucking gun on someone.'"_ On his screen, Berner put his coffee cup – jug, really – down with a desperate sigh and messed with his already tumultuous hair, poofing it up to look like a bird's nest.

Terra hummed, trying to picture how the rope loops would go around her shoulders. "The military is hogging most of the capacity and I couldn't lend a byte if I wanted to, but—" she rolled her eyes up, unfocusing as she mentally ran through the different NDA's she had signed to make sure she wasn't spilling anything illegal "—a little bird told me that the new compression algorithms should be rolling out before the 0600 bulk upload. There's going to be unspent quota – and you owe me now – so if you can get a hold on Lee, you might be able to take those off his hands with an off-the-books deal. He probably has plenty of backend work he'd love to hand off to you in exchange."

Berner visibly deflated on the screen. _"Oh thank the gods, we need every scrap we can get. The databases are spread all over the—you know how it is. I'll get in touch with him, then. Better go practice on my groveling."_

She had that new set of white nylon rope too which looked just fantastic on her. Decisions, decisions. She scrolled down the page, frowning when she couldn't decide. "Just keep the gun as a last resort. He makes good coffee."

Berner barked a laugh at her, the video turning pixelated as he waved his hand too quickly at the camera. _"At this rate I'm going to swallow the barrel myself. Haven't seen the sun in... Dear lord, I've lost track. Open a window in my memory, will you dear, before I suffocate on the fan exhaust air down here."_ He leaned back out of the frame, just the manatee graphic showing while letting out a keening, frustrated groan, ending with him slumping down. He let his hand fall down on the keyboard, hanging up the call and turning the cam window into just the default intranet profile picture he had not bothered to change.

Terra sighed, pushing her glasses up to her forehead to rub her eyes, taking in the moment of calm between the crises. Morbid humor like that was rather unlike him, but like everyone else, Berner was burning himself from both ends. He more than most, really, as he had to stay cooped up between the server racks because gods knew if there wasn't a soul alive who could keep as many discs spinning as he did. She glanced at the histogram again, this time looking at the timestamp, and she grimaced when she saw it reading an all-too-late 0500. Or, at this point, all too early, which was probably the worst possible transition to see a day go through.

They were both pushing their limits, but so was everyone else. In the wake of the infrastructural apocalypse that was the CCT broadcast network going out, everyone was scrambling and pulling double shifts in an attempt to figure out how to make do when everything was like back in pre-war days. And for all that was holy, one of the techies had even dug up old genuine pre-war _semaphore_ systems because of how fragmented the coverage was around the fringes. Every piece of communications tech was being feverishly bludgeoned into usable shape to make up for the primary network going down, as so much of the local landline connectivity had fallen to disuse simply because of how easy it had been to tap into the ever-present CCT network. Luckily, Argus still had a usable mainline connection to Mistral proper, but like most of its kin, it had been left to rust in the maintenance backburner for decades. Now that line was running red-hot since thanks to the deluge of valuable data transported by fleets of Atlesian carrier pigeon crafts over the sea, everyone was fighting over who could push their payload through the single line which was seeing similar traffic coming from the other end. None of the early stress-testing for any of the systems had been designed with that kind of load in mind, so keeping the entire node network pipeline from popping like a firework in the most exotic of ways under all that round-the-clock load was a monumental task.

She leaned back on her chair, briefly allowing herself to give in to the tiredness and closing her eyes. The whole situation was a red-hot mess alright, and she had been running around for days with her phone buzzing so constantly that it might as well have been a vibrator. The growing allure to keep her eyes closed made her force them open, and she found herself staring at the ceiling which was slowly lighting up along with the quiet, creeping dawn. The constant running and stressing and abandoning deadlines had been an all-consuming task as of late, and there really hadn't been time for her to just... sit down accept what had happened. The tournament livestream they had been watching seemed so unreal now. One moment, they were cheering for the Nikos girl, and the next, an improbable Atlesian superweapon lay scrapped on the floor while an enigmatic lady monologued over alarm sirens. The world didn't make sense, and Saph was even worse off since her little brother had been in the arena when all that had happened before the radio silence hit.

Terra's own absence from the house probably didn't help with that. She grimaced and sat up on her chair, cracking her neck and pushing aside the now-dried remains of instant noodle lunch on her desk. All the more reason to keep distracting herself between tickets because right now she felt that if she had to kludge together one more interface between pieces of equipment that hadn't been made in the same century or continent, she'd be ready to jump out of that open window of Berner's. Yes, spending government time to prepare a surprise for her distraught wife sounded like the absolute best use of the resources she had available at the moment.

Actually...

She glanced at her dashboard on the side, seeing no incoming tickets. She could splurge, just a bit. Right? She double-checked that all of her multimedia connections were indeed closed, and she toggled on the holo-projectors arranged around the office.

"Nickel, can you show this in 3D?" she said out loud, bringing up a browser tab and kicking herself off away from the desk, her chair rolling easily on the floor. There was a blip and hum as the enormous data bank that had been crammed into her office spun to life, cycling through its diagnostics lights before a female shape coalesced into existence in front of her, wearing a perfectly fitted business suit and a professional, cute bun.

"Tab 24?" it asked with a voice that had been designed to be as amiable as possible, face gaining resolution until it became almost indistinguishable from a real person if you ignored the transparency. Terra looked the avatar over and then glanced at the data bank in the corner, verifying that it was working as intended with all the lights solid green. One of the upsides of having signed all those NDA's was the clearances which came with them, which meant that the backup AI core from the local CCT node had been shoved into her office "for supervision." The cable monkeys were uprooting the whole thing to bulk up the direct communications backbone and there was nowhere else to put it in.

"Yeah, the rightmost one." The AI turned fluidly and made a pointless hand gesture to bring the current shibari tie on her screen to life in the middle of the room, making a featureless torso hang in the air. Terra hummed and sunk down on her chair, flicking her wrist to make the model spin and then steepling her fingers, looking at the tie over them. It was a pretty thing, but the way it knitted around the back was not something that she thought she could tie on her own. Maybe if she went down to the robotics dept and asked Götz to give her an arm...

She shook her head, chuckling tiredly. She really shouldn't bring work to this. Well, any more than she already had. "You think that's doable on my own?" she asked after a moment, tilting her head. She might be able to pin the loose end under something to get the tension right for starting the tie, but that felt... awkward. The weave looked pretty complex.

The AI walked around the model. "Hard to say." The model started unraveling, the AI making the knots and ropes loosen and expand. "What kind of reach do you have?"

Terra hummed. "I don't think you can puzzle that out, can you," she murmured and pursed her lips, reaching behind her backrest to try to figure out if she could grab the end of the rope like that.

"I do not have access to personnel medical files or bodyscans," it said, and Terra squinted at it. Sometimes it felt like they had coded it to be intentionally snarky. Must be just coincidence.

"Actually—" Terra said, getting up and groaning gutturally as her knees reminded her that she was not built to sit cross-legged for six hours in one go. She cursed and stretched her legs, feeling light-headed from the sudden motion. She really should go for a jog, one of these days.

"You do seem distressed, so I could request those medical fil—" the AI said helpfully, but Terra silenced it with an angry wave.

"Can it," she groaned and stretched, feeling her back pop loud enough to scare a chiropractor. She'd be feeling like a geriatric if this level of crunch kept going on for much longer. "As I said, can you blow that bigger?" The model expanded smoothly, and Terra walked through it. "And put the knot from tab fifteen on the front, here." The model changed, and she prodded the ropes with her finger to make them meld this way and that, pushing the pretty knot to sit on the sternum of the model. She spun it around, pursing her lips. "That work?"

The AI tilted its head, as if it needed the time to actually consider. She had looked at the documentation surrounding the thing out of curiosity, and it was just a tiny bit unnerving to know that most everything that she saw had been tailored specifically to have it make users feel at ease. "It pulls off on the right," it said and made the model weave unravel. Ah, right, the tie wasn't symmetric, so she had to anchor it somehow on the right. She scratched the side of her head and poked at the holographic ropes. Maybe if she did away with the side weave... No, that would mean reworking the entire thing. Or a second rope...

She stole a look at the screen as she walked around the model, finding the histogram steady. She turned back to the model and spun it vertically. It was hard to get a feel on the thing with no feedback. Though... She stopped, glancing at the door. In for a penny?

"How much hardlight do we have banked?" she asked slowly.

"500 kilocarats, currently."

In for a pound. She looked at the model and then back at the door, walking up to it and locking it. "Alright, one second." She grabbed the hem of her tank top, casting it off to the side and working off her bra as she did. She looked at the AI which was entirely indifferent – by the virtue of being unable to care – but it still felt... weird to be undressed around it.

She pushed through the discomfort anyway, sighing as the pressure of her bra disappeared. She had gotten used to how stifling it was, and she stretched as she felt the air conditioning on her skin. Said air conditioning might be coming from a dozen of coolant fans scattered around the electronics in the room, but the effect was still pleasant.

"Alright," she said, finishing her stretch and walking back over to the model, stepping into it and feeling the nonexistent touch of the cloud of hardlight Dust deforming against her skin. "Solidify the ropes here and here." She pointed at them around her and rolled her shoulders as the ropes started growing more solid. "And shrink it back to my size. Remove the torso model."

"Of course," the AI said, making the model go down in size around Terra. She wiggled against it, feeling how it constricted around her until it sat snugly on her skin. "Okay, let's see... Loosen this and this, and undo this," she said, pointing at different parts of the tie and seeing them undo themselves at her command. It was a novel experience. Definitely more convenient for experimentation than real rope was as the holograms slid easily on her and through each other when necessary. Having an assistant like this was also extremely useful, as it was ever so helpfully providing real-time visual aids for her. It also let her be more creative than usual, and she started working on the weave on her side. Maybe one of those dragon patterns? A sinuous wrap going up her side. Yes, that was definitely something she'd want to do at some point, but maybe too much for this one. Perhaps something a bit simpler... but a pattern of some sort would look very nice on her.

Maybe something in the front? Centered designs were usually easier. She looked down at her navel and pushed a few ropes there. Actually, if she squinted, the ropes leading into the double-coin knot made a few angular shapes on her ribcage look a bit like butterfly's wings. Maybe she could make a whole pattern out of that? She pulled a few more ropes from the sides, the holograms extending easily without a threat of a rope burn. She might be able to make it work... And Saph did like butterflies. The painting she had gotten in their bedroom had those too.

She got lost in the engineering challenge of the project, sinking into the details of how to weave the shape she wanted without it looking lopsided. As the tie grew more complex, she had to hook up the ropes around her thighs and between her legs – purely for structural purposes – and the resulting pressure through her shorts started gradually making her aware of the fact that she had not slept in the same bed with Saph in almost a week.

"Something wrong?" the AI asked after a moment, shaking Terra from her thoughts. She coughed, pulling at the ropes behind her back and testing that hey could hold her arms firmly.

"Uh, no, just..." She trailed off and wondered just how much the neural network churning in the box in the corner would understand of a woman's need for intimacy. "Distracted. Work time has been overtaking wife time."

"I believe gifts are the preferred way of apologizing for that."

Terra squinted at the AI again. These things were getting too sharp for their own good. "Well, that's what I'm working on." She tried to gesture around herself, but her arms were held tight. "All this. Mostly."

The AI nodded. "When do you think you can give it to her?"

"When I get home, alright?" Terra snapped, though her outburst was somewhat dampened by the transparent intricate ropework holding her. It's not like she could just _choose_ to not be available when everything was falling apart, wife or no wife.

"I can see your shift history, and it's not indicative of you getting home soon."

Terra groaned, turning her back to the AI and focusing on the model in front of her, depicting a complex six-way tie which made up the butterfly shape. "Don't remind me. Bloody anarchists." She felt a tinge of shame because even in the wake of untold thousands dying and a global panic setting in due to crippled infrastructure, what hit her the hardest was that it had been days since she had had someone comb her hair on a lazy morning. The memory made her chest tighten.

"Is there any way of giving it in advance, then?"

Terra sighed. "Damned if I know. Everyone's tied up—" she was suddenly thankful that the AI wouldn't poke fun at that "—and the temp node opening just means more work piling up."

"And it has to be in person?"

Terra turned around, eyeing the AI suspiciously. It was definitely leading up to something with these questions, which seemed awfully oblique for a pile of IF statements. "I'm not hiring an escort for her, thank you very much."

The AI seemed to understand that she wasn't being literal, and it imitated an amused laugh for her benefit. "I meant a recording. A 'nude,' as the slang dictionary tells me they are called."

Terra snorted, flushing. That's ridiculous. She was working!

...working on an erotic bondage art piece, fine, but still. There were more cameras in a hundred meter radius of her than there were in most of godsdamn Mistral. And she could be pinged at any moment. And... She swallowed, feeling the rope rub her through her shorts. She did have her office on lockdown, pretty much, and the catastrophe responsible for her current workload also meant that there were no out-of-timezone calls bothering her at 5 AM. She pulled her arms up subtly, tightening the rope on her.

The government was eating up her free time, so it seemed only fair that she could use military-grade Dust and a million-lien piece of public infrastructure equipment to enjoy herself a bit, wasn't it? She – Saphron – definitely deserved it.

"Uh..." she said, turning around, feeling her flush deepen. "Turn on recording on my phone. Private drive G:4, Rijndael encryption." Just in case.

The AI nodded, not at all caring about the shift in the conversation, and just took Terra's scroll from the desk, undocking and turning it towards Terra.

"I can edit this later, can't I? Uh, yeah." Terra cleared her throat as she got to her knees, suddenly aware of how her glasses were a bit lower on her nose than usual and how bloodshot her eyes had to be. And her hair was probably a mess... had she even showered today? She had kind of lost track. This seemed like a terrible idea the more she thought about it.

"It's filming now," the AI said, leaving the scroll hovering in the air with three holographic studs to support it. The AI gave Terra a surprisingly enthusiastic thumbs-up, throwing her off the loop.

"Ah, um." She gathered her thoughts, taking a breath and looking up to the camera, smiling. "Hey," she said softly, pulling the ropes tighter behind her.

It was a simple greeting, but it had grown to something more over the years. It was the first word they had spoken to each other, and the first one they exchanged whenever they saw each other after waking up or getting back from work. There were so many other things to say that they'd run out of words and time, so they had in a wordless agreement settled for just that, letting it convey all that they stood for. She felt the slack on the ropes disappear, the AI giving her a thumbs-up again.

"Bit of a slow day... night... morning in the office." She gave the camera a wink and a half-chuckle. "I figured that you might want a reminder of what the government is keeping from you." She bit her tongue, but couldn't resist adding, "And no, it's not aliens. Despite what Giorgio insists. Just me here, I'm afraid."

Gods, this was going all wrong. She shouldn't try to be sexy on three hours of sleep. As she fumbled with the words, the AI circled around, walking into the camera's view behind Terra and giving it a wave. Terra smiled nervously, nodding towards the AI.

"I borrowed the CCT clerk for... let's say demonstration purposes. They aren't using it anyway." The AI put its hands on Terra's hips, sliding up and palming her breasts which were framed by the shibari tie which was already perking them up. Terra took a deep breath, feeling how the stress, longing and tension from the past week coiled deep in her stomach and started burning hot. "Just—just thought I'd want to tell you I miss you," she breathed out, voice wavering when the AI pinched her nipples. Good lord, she hadn't realized how pent-up she had been.

The AI massaged her breasts expertly enough that Terra didn't feel like wondering what data set it was using to get that result. She groaned as it made the ropes around her tighten a bit, digging in the one running between her legs. "I—fuck—I think about you a lot," she said, looking into the camera and breathing through her mouth. "Your lips on me, fingers—fingers in me." She swallowed, closing her eyes and focusing on the slow massage, picturing Saphron's hands on her. The only warmth she had been really feeling lately came from instant noodles and heatsinks, so the thought of Saphron's body against hers was even more attractive than usual.

She exhaled slowly when the AI's hands started sliding down her body, and she gasped when they hooked on the waistband of her shorts. For a moment she was confused, given how the tie was tight on top of them, but she realized that the holographic nature of the tie let the AI slide them through it just like that. She breathed shakily, the camera suddenly making her skin feel like it was on fire as her shorts fell on the floor. The only thing covering her was just a length of partially see-through rope running down from her navel with a smooth knot along the way resting on her clit.

She forgot about the embarrassment the moment the AI pulled at the rope from behind her, slowly digging it in deeper and making her vision go out of focus for half a second. She pushed her hips forward, following the pressure and moaning through her teeth. "Gods—fuck—ah," she stammered, trying to find her words when the AI put its hand on her stomach, limiting her movements and started slowly tugging at the rope, making the knot glide against her clit. "I wish you were here..." She gasped as the erratic tugs broke her focus, so she just continued to saying anything that came to mind. "Remember that, that time when you bought the massaging showerhead and joined me in the sho—shower?" She smiled, feeling the blush spread down her neck as she made eye contact with the camera lens. That shower had been the best surprise she could remember getting, and even if the details were fuzzy, she had vivid memories of Saph pressing her against the bathroom mirror, nibbling on and whispering in her ear with her hands roving all over her. "I think about that a lot, too."

She bit her lip, feeling the pressure build in her, and the AI snaked its hand around her to stroke her directly, sliding its finger up and down under the knot. She could imagine Saphron's hands and body on her, each inch of it mapped out in her mind. The warmth, the way her hair always got in the way and in her eyes, the hot breaths on her skin, the giggles and the gasps. She sighed, eyes closed and focused on the hands on her, part imagination, part hologram. "I just... just want to feel you," she said breathlessly, eyes fluttering open when the touches ceased, and the rest of what she had to say was quickly forgotten when she saw the AI holding a translucent dildo in front of her. She blinked and coughed out a surprised laugh at its sudden appearance, stealing an embarrassed look at the camera. "I swear I don't know how it does that." She swallowed and looked over the slender dildo, eyes following the ripple pattern on it. Usually she preferred just her hands – or better yet, Saphron's – but right now the emptiness between her legs made the idea of having something solid in her a very attractive one.

"Would you like me to put it away, or—" the AI started, but Terra cut it off with an annoyed glare.

"Shut up. Put it on the floor." The AI obeyed wordlessly, and Terra shimmied forward to kneel over the dildo which was pointing up in front of the camera. She was hot all over, her glasses sliding a tiny bit lower on her nose, and her ears burned from the feeling of being on stage, especially when the AI leaned against her back and cupped the undersides of her breasts to make her chest stand out more, but she pushed through it and slid her knees further apart, taking a deep breath and looking into the camera. She couldn't quite do a split like she had used to back in her gymnast days, but she could get pretty close. With a short inhale, she held her breath and started sliding her knees apart, feeling the tip of the dildo prod against the rope and then against her lips. She slid herself against it a few times, hoping that the camera caught how slick it became, and then she leaned forward to slowly let it sink in. She stopped there, exhaling slowly and raising herself up slightly to try again, this time going lower. The dildo was perfectly smooth with a mathematical perfection, so even without the lubrication, it would've been easy to take it.

She cursed under her breath as she sank lower, feeling the wonderful pressure inside her spread and chase away the nagging feeling of emptiness. She quickly licked her lower lip and repeated the motion, slowly working more of the toy into her. She groaned, both from the fullness and the feel of stretching her legs too far, so she rose higher and tried again, inching her knees farther apart. She was close to taking it all in, but she just couldn't go lower on the split without making her joints overextend, so she suspended herself as low as she could go, panting breathlessly. The thought of making it all the way down made her shiver as she imagined her lips touching the base of the dildo. 

"Fuck..." she breathed out, worrying her lip and feeling the AI massage her chest. "I really... wish you were here to help. I just love how your hands feel like they're going all over me." She started to shimmy her knees forward to get out of the split, but the AI interrupted her by raising the dildo up and sliding in the last sliver of it, drawing out a gasp from her. "Ah, fuck, th—there," she panted, thighs shaking from the strain. The AI slid its hand over her stomach, and she could only stare in a hazy hypnosis as it drifted down and lower, dipping under the rope and pressing its smooth thumb against her clit. The buzz of sensations made her jerk her head to the side sharply enough to throw her glasses askew. She had no free hands to correct them with so she tried to shake them back in place, almost managing to throw them off completely. She huffed, flushing at the camera, but forgot about it when the AI started moving the dildo in and out of her in a sedate pace, forcing a surprised groan from her. She stiffened and slowly gyrated her hips back and forth to find a better rhythm, tilting her head to look at the scroll camera through the one lens of her glasses which was still aligned with her eye. She panted with her mouth open, trying and failing to find her words as her head started to feel increasingly like cotton.

"And also, I want, I—shit I'm close," she gasped out in one breath, her tilted glasses sliding off her entirely as she lost her train of thought due to the toy and hand between her legs. "Fuck, Saph—haa, Saphron—" she couldn't finish her sentence when the climax hit her, not that she had the words to do so either. She groaned, thighs clamping together and hips bucking against the finger thumbing her clit, images of Saphron smiling and breathing against her flashing through her head. She rode it as long as she could before slumping down as the orgasm ran its course, the eighteen hours of wakefulness catching up to her in an instant. She groaned and just waved at the AI with a mumbled command, which was miraculously interpreted correctly as the avatar disappeared along with the rest of the holograms.

She sighed, blinking at the blurry world and pulled her knees to her side, fumbling to find her dropped glasses. She was tired enough that they didn't make anything significantly less blurrier, but she put them on anyway before picking up the phone and smiling at the camera.

"Love you," she whispered, still catching her breath and feeling an urgent need to curl up against someone soft. "The texts aren't good enough for that." She tried leaning closer to the camera, but then she realized that she was just filling the screen with her unkept hair. She huffed in amusement and pulled back, caressing the phone and pretending that that could carry over. "I'll try to get an evening or two off soon." She could feel her throat tighten just the slightest bit. Damn the military and damn the rest of them too. "I'm looking forward to that, but I hope this, uh..." She trailed off, feeling a fresh wave of embarrassment wash over her as she realized that she was sitting naked in her office after having the receptionist AI make her cum. "...I hope that gave at least some inspiration." She gave a short laugh and puffed a lock of hair off her face, closing her eyes for a few seconds. Gods, it felt good to just keep them closed.

She hadn't even realized that she had spaced out until the scroll buzzed in her hand, making her yelp and drop it, almost falling over herself. She muttered a curse and when she scrambled back to it, she saw that she had a message from one of the satellite departments who had finally gotten the lights on and were frantically asking what was going on. She slid the message from her scroll to her desktop, craning her neck to see the coverage overlay map, grimacing as she traced the blue lines which signified a patchwork thread of ancient copper connection lines which had been forgotten as obsolete and put through the shredder of urban planning over the years.

She shook herself back to present, remembering that the scroll was still recording. "Hah, work calls," she said mirthlessly, feeling the stress and responsibility build on her shoulders again. She held the camera and tucked her hair behind her ear, trying to come up with something incredible and concise that could put to words the painful tightness in her chest which always came when she thought of Saph.

She failed, so she just gave the camera a wan smile. "See you two soon, love."

Then she got up, fishing her shorts back up and collapsing on her chair, allowing herself two seconds of pretend sleep before kicking herself back to her workstation, blinking tiredness out of her eyes and swiping her hair to the back, starting to pick apart the report she had just gotten.

* * *

_"I can edit this later, can't I? Uh, yeah."_

Saphron's eyes went wide. Terra was naked in her office, sporting just a pair of shorts and what looked like a hideously time-consuming shibari getup which hugged her torso all over, pressing around her breasts and forming a beautiful knot on her sternum which flowed down and unfolded into a butterfly-like fan on her stomach. When had she gotten that on herself?

 _"Ah, um,"_ Terra mumbled, seemingly embarrassed and caught off-guard. She was flushed and tired, her hair poking in varying directions, but the smile on her face was as heart-melting as it always was. Perhaps even more so now that she was raw from everything, poor thing.

_"Hey."_

Saphron smiled warmly, zooming the video on Ter's face. She could see the bags under her eyes belying how exhausted she was, and it made her heart throb. She was so dedicated. And cute. And adorable. And it was so indescribably unfair that she was trapped off in a bunker somewhere, yelling at computers instead of dozing off on their sofa here.

 _"Bit of a slow day... night... morning in the office."_ Ter did that tick she always did when she thought she was being silly, glancing to the side and quickly biting her lower lip. Adorable little nerd. Saphron's eyebrows rose when she saw a transparent woman enter the scene, and the resulting breathy sounds from the scroll made her blush all the way down to her neck when she realized what the rope was made of.

_"I—fuck—I think about you a lot."_

Saphron's chest flared with warmth, her ears tingling from the flush, and she fixed her position on the sofa. She glanced at the stairs leading to the second floor and looked back at the screen, slowly sinking her hand over her stomach and under her waistband, chuckling to herself when Terra managed to tilt her eyeglasses sideways.

**Author's Note:**

> Crack like this is exactly why I randomize my Kinktober ships. I went into it with no expectations or clear picture for what to do, but as I kept writing, the characterization and personality just kept building along with the self-indulgent worldbuilding snippets.


End file.
